


Under Skin

by alessandralee



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-12
Updated: 2014-01-12
Packaged: 2018-01-08 10:41:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1131681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alessandralee/pseuds/alessandralee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It's like a tornado under my skin."</p><p>Grant Ward contemplates his feelings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under Skin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OpenPandorasBox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OpenPandorasBox/gifts).



Grant Ward wasn’t normally one for flowery words. He was too straightforward for that. Yes somehow he has ended up here, in the training room, going at the punching bag with all his strength, in a desperate attempt to knock a few of them out of his head.

“It’s like a tornado under my skin.”

Those words had come out of Skye’s mouth earlier that morning, as she sat on top of one of the steel tables in the lab. Jemma has just finished affixing a series of electrodes and sensors to Skye’s skin, in an attempt to nullify the vibrations that had been moving through Skye’s body for the last hour. In retrospect, they probably should have realized that the bioterrorist they’d been tracking would booby-trap his laptop. But they hadn’t.

It hadn’t taken them that long to cure Skye, by means he didn’t really understand the science of, but her words still stuck with him. Tornadoes under the skin seemed like an apt description of what he was feeling.

Only his tornado hadn’t been caused by a bioterrorist, just a certain biochemist.

He’d tried to explain his feeling away after he’d followed her out the cargo bay of a plane thousands of miles above ground. And for a long time that had worked. He’d convinced himself that his feelings were because of their burgeoning friendship. He’d had have done the same thing for any of his new teammates. And he would have, just perhaps not with as much desperation.

A small part of him has been relieved when an Asgardian staff has turned him into a rage monster. That darkness had filled him up and left very little room for anything else. He could use sex to burn off his sudden abundance of energy, as well as some of his extra anger. And he did. But Grant Ward had long ago developed masterful coping skills. It didn’t take him to long to get in fury in check, and with that, other emotions began to resurface.

Jemma Simmons wasn’t like Melinda May. That was a given. But more importantly, his feelings for Jemma Simmons weren’t the same as his feelings for Melinda May. With May, they were just two people satisfying physical urges, burning away the excess adrenaline that came with their line of work. They could turn that on and off. And, of course, May wasn’t someone he had to worried about in a fight. She could kick his ass, never mind whatever goon or assassin they ended up facing off with. Jemma, on the other hand, would be at risk every time they ended up in a dangerous situation. And he’d already proven that he couldn’t help but rush into that danger, whenever she was concerned. He couldn’t afford to be even more emotionally invested in her. But there she was, a tornado spinning away underneath his skin.

Which is exactly what brought him down here in the first place. He’d been in his bunk, trying to watch the Red Sox game on the feed Skye had set up for him, but he couldn’t get those words out of his head. He’d tried focusing on the game, he’d tried multi-tasking with some reports he had to finish. He’d even tried singing his ABCs quietly to himself, the way he did when a song got stuck in his head. Nothing had worked. And then thinking about what went on under his skin led to thinking about Jemma’s skin. And thinking about that had just led to him needing to burn off some energy. Preferably by punching things.

Of course, it hadn’t occurred to him that Jemma might be down there too. But there she was, puttering around the lab as she worked on one of her experiments, pausing every now and then to jot down notes on a pad of paper. He’d waited until she turned her back to grab something out of a cabinet before running past the lab’s giant windows and into the training room. He knew he’d gone unnoticed when the doors slid closed behind him without a peep from the lab.

Unfortunately, he was still very much aware of how close by she was. It would only take seconds for him to walk out of the training and into her lab. He could ask her about whatever experiment she had going on. He was pretty sure it had something to do with blood. One of the refrigerators in the lab had been filled with blood bags when he was in there earlier. He certainly hoped that meant she was using them in an experiment. Either that or she was preparing for them all to be grievously injured on a regular basis. If he went in there, she’d probably try to explain her experiment to him and it would probably go way over his head. It usually did. He didn’t mind most of the time, because she was enthusiastic enough to sell sand in a desert. He was enraptured by her even when she was discussing blood, or sandwich seasoning, or even grisly murders.

Every time he considered joining her, he added another set of reps to his workout. He’d had to move from the punching bag to the treadmill after a while, once his arms had started to feel like jelly. It was nearly midnight by the time he decided that he was too tired to finish his punishments. It wasn’t like they were helping to keep his brain in check. So he wiped down the machines and headed for the door. 

He had to sneak past the lab windows again on his way out, and he was embarrassed to do it, even if he was the only one who knew. Even his exhaustion couldn’t prevent his stomach from flip-flopping when he caught sight of her from the corner of his eye. He hurried past the lab, where she was still hard at work, and up the stairs.

This was not what he’d expected when he joined the team. He worked alone, that was how he was comfortable. He hated groups. Most of the time, he hated other people. He never expected to care about his teammates at all. And he certainly hasn’t planned on feeling the way he didn’t about Jemma. He needed to get that under control. He promised himself he would soon. After all, tornadoes couldn’t possible last forever.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for OpenPandorasBox, who submitted the prompt "tornadoes."


End file.
